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| THE UTTARAKHAND DISASTER | | | Sandeep Bamzai
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, once the Chief Minister of a State, ought to have noticed the mischief behind the campaign to sack an elected Government. He went by wrong advice from a set of 'insiders'
Has Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the ultimate outsider, become an insider by falling prey and even a prisoner to the Delhi darbaris? Events unleashed by the BJP in both Arunachal Pradesh and more recently Uttarakhand clearly seem to suggest so. Taking the clarion call of a Congress- mukt Bharat so seriously that all constitutional safeguards were thrown to the wind, the BJP leadership, which obviously includes Modi, chose to destabilise a democratically elected Government in Uttarakhand by engineering a split. As was the case during the latter part of the UPA2 dispensation when it abdicated executive authority only to see the judiciary step in since nature abhors a vacuum, it is the steadfast judiciary which has prevailed in this scrum too.
Last time it was corruption that the court decided to take and shake by the scruff of the neck. By not allowing the nine rebels to cast their vote in the floor test, the apex court ensured fairplay and a level playing field for the embattled Congress led by Harish Rawat. To take a position that a person is corrupt and then succumb to the temptation of imperilling his Government, is old style realpolitik which Indira Gandhi was a master at. In circa 2016, with an enlightened media and judiciary constantly scrutinising actions, this stratagem is fraught with danger and risk.
The last time a scandal of a similar scale broke, there was a ballyhoo of gargantuan proportions. Trust the Congress to fashion it. In 2005, then Bihar Governor Buta Singh had recommended the dissolution of the Assembly, which the Union Cabinet under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh approved and forwarded to then President, APJ Abdul Kalam. He was on a visit to Moscow at that time, and signed the proclamation there on May 23. But Kalam was penitent after this reproachful decision. His own Press Secretary at the time, SM Khan, revealed this late last year during a lecture. Kalam had thought of quitting as the President in 2005 after the Supreme Court quashed the proclamation. It was challenged in the Supreme Court, where a five-judge Constitution Bench, headed by Justice YK Sabharwal, held on October 7, 2005, that "the proclamation of May 23 dissolving the Bihar Assembly is unconstitutional".
The widespread use in the past of the dreaded Article 356 to depose State regimes finally came a cropper with the landmark SR Bommai judgement, though the Justice YK Sabharwal verdict in the Bihar case was equally important. Article 356, also referred to as the 'President's Rule', is invoked if there has been a failure of the constitutional machinery in any State. In April 1989, Karnataka Chief Minister SR Bommai requested Governor P Ventakasubbiah for an opportunity to prove his majority in the Assembly as the leader of the Janata Dal legislature party. It was denied, and Bommai's Government was dismissed.
Ultimately, the matter reached the Supreme Court. The judges on the case rejected the argument that the President had unrestricted power to issue a proclamation under Article 356. Justice Ramaswamy cautioned that the provision should never be used for political gain or to get rid of an inconvenient State Government. Frequent elections would belie people's faith in the parliamentary system, he said, and warned that loss of belief in the democratic process would sound the death-knell for the nation's parliamentary system. Despite such a strong precedent in both the Bommai and the Bihar cases, the BJP leadership chose to subvert and topple an elected Government in Uttarakhand.
The question is: Why did the Prime Minister succumb to this dubious and puzzling method of disposing a democratically elected Government? Was he advised wrongly, and more importantly, why did the President of India give his assent to this proclamation? Further, it is still not clear when and how Governor KK Paul recommended the imposition of President's Rule. Modi's political sagacity and understanding cannot be faulted, for, as a veritable 'outsider', he managed to storm the bastion of Delhi and become Prime Minister, despite the presence of a cosy cabal in the BJP's top rung. He broke the glass ceiling as it were and consigned the dominant BJP satraps to the dust bowl of history. Has the old guard that he displaced with his neo-brand of people connect politics, been replaced by a new one which is resorting to these diabolical plans that are imploding?
Uttar Pradesh in October 1997 and Andhra Pradesh in August 1983 saw such shameful acts take place where Governors Romesh Bhandari and Ram Lal respectively did the bidding of their political masters at the Centre. For Modi to do so, he must have been offered very compelling reasons by his party strategists.
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